Haitian Sensation Radio: Stardust/Old Folks

I’ve never been much of a free-jazz guy. I mean, I respect and even dig some of the work that falls into the category, like the efforts of Ornette Coleman, Pharoah Sanders and others. But the place where I instinctively go as a jazz fan has always been to hard bop. Hard bop, as the name suggests, came out as an evolution of be-bop but worked in more elements from rhythm & blues, gospel and blues sources. Hard bop didn’t trade away the intellectualism of be-bop but was less concerned with the technicalities of the songcraft, and homed in more on communicating certain sensibilities.

A friend once mocked my jazz preferences by basically saying, “Ha ha, youuuu like structure!” in that sing-songy playground teasing way. But you listen to this track by Joe Henderson and the way he plays with the structure of these two standards is indicative of what a fertile imagination can do within the strictures of melody and tunefulness. (It’s the fourth track on the album.)

Epistrophy Epiphany

I just finished reading Robin D. G. Kelley’s Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of An American Original last week. It’s a heroically researched chunk of words and I’d have to stand in awe of it even if it wasn’t about one of my favorite musicians ever.

Kelley interviewed tons of family members, musical peers and friends as would be expected, but he goes deeper than any other musician biography I’ve ever read. He also rounds up people who went to see random gigs, checks the decades-old logs of the local musician unions and investigates mental health medical practices through Monk’s lifetime.

Scrap Iron Man

When I was in college, I wrote a long-ass final paper for my Minorities in the Media class about black superheroes. (What up, Professor Dent?) Using Ishmael Reed’s Black Pathology Biz as a jumping-off point, I looked at how black characters in superhero comics tended to fall into different categories. Characters like Black Goliath would be a prime example of “Too Smart for His Own Good”: scientific geniuses who tended to have adventures where his brain was never as important as his brawn. Other heroes like Black Lightning were cast in the “Credit to His Race” mold, where they fought crime in lurid ghettos filled with people too apathetic or scared to change their own circumstances. I came up with a few more archetypes that I can’t remember right now. It was a long time ago and I’ve since lost the paper. I think I got a B+ on it?

Graeme McMillan’s recent piece on War Machine over at Gawker’s sci-fi blog i09 reminded me of my undergrad analysis. The portrayals of black characters in superhero comics have been wince-inducing mostly because they riffed off of cultural cues that you kinda got the sense that the creators didn’t really get. Blaxploitation, Afro-diasporic otherness and hip-hop all got channeled in really bizarre ways when they got gussied up in superhero tights. With very few exceptions, I could never shake the feeling that, man, something must be wrong with these cats. And not in a good way. McMillan’s piece on Rhodey strikes that same chord.

Guess Whose Back?

It’s weird to think that Sade’s new joint will be dropping next year. She was probably my first celebrity crush. Hell, my first crush period. She was (is) fine, yes, but it was more the aura of mysterious allure that the artist and her work projected that set my teenage heart to pining away. Her songs were where I first started contemplating romantic love, desire, friendships and adult responsibilities, but also they got me thinking how and when those things break down. I was listening to “Maureen,” “When Am I Going to Make  A Living?” and “Love Is Stronger Than Pride” way before my first love affair or break-up but those songs got me ready to talk about those things.

Her work introduced me to the idea that I’d have to mature. Her albums also teased my young mind with the idea of a hip, bohemian yet cosmopolitan world where sensitive, nerdy types like me might actually fit in.

Musically, the jazzy and soulful vibe of her bandmates helped ignite my curiosity about jazz and soul music.  Sure, those drum machine beats on “Siempre Hay Esperanza” sound a little out of place now, but that sax playing is some on-point ballad artistry.

Sade’s music worked for me as a lonely teenager but it kept on working for me as a committed adult. It’s been ten years since her last studio work and no one’s come close to matching her unique voicings. Lots of songs and singers mine the emotion of longing but no one gets at it the way Ms. Adu does. I may have been first entranced by her when I was still a skinny teenager but I’ve learned (the hard way) that longing doesn’t go away when you’re grown. That’s why Soldier of Love will probably be a day one purchase for me.